Why is this relevent? Well the Pokemon franchise announced a new game today and it’s… different.

Pokemon Go will be an app-based game that allows you to catch and fight with Pokemon on your phone whilst you’re out and about. You’ll be able to rain and battle as you walk around in the real world, with the phone notifying you when a Pokemon is nearby, as well as when others are battling or want to battle you. You can also team up with other trainers to take down legendary Pokemon, as you can see in the pretty epic video.

Reactions to this have been… well predictable.

That is to say this announcement has been met with utter hatred. To some extent… I get it. It’s a free to play mobile game. Those generally speaking are not the best things in the world. If this is like those and forces you to pay for gems/hearts/whatever to get anywhere then I’m not all that interested. There’s also the problem that if this doesn’t take off, it’ll be lame to play. There’s also fears that this is what we’re getting instead of Pokemon Z which… no. It’s not.

They’re announced new Pokemon formes lately and they’ve made no mention of this game being compatible with the main series games. We’ll get our main series game, don’t worry.

All of this aside, I actually think Pokemon Go is an incredible idea. The idea of everyone walking around with Pokemon in their pockets, being able to watch other people battle in real life and being able to catch Pokemon on my morning walk… these sound incredible to me. I know it’s not really real and it probably wont be as epic as the trailer makes it out to be but… at least they’re trying. I love also that they are making it clear from the advertising that this is not just aimed at children, this is aimed at people in their twenties and thirties.

Which, let’s be fair, makes sense as a lot of Pokemon fanatics are getting older these days. Ahem, ahem.

To me, the problem with this is not the concept, it’s the execution. So I’ll definitely be getting this for my phone, if only for something to do on my morning walks.

Now if you can kindly announce a main series game some time soon that’d be great as well.